Page 14 of Blades Out
Because despite the intimidation rolling off him—despite the cold office and flat voice and expressionless face—something in my chest had unclenched the moment I walked through his door. The panic that had been clawing at my ribs in the storage room had quieted. My hands had stopped shaking.
Standing here felt safer than it should.
I didn't understand why.
And from the way he watched me—guarded, wary, like I was something dangerous he needed to track—he didn't understand his own reaction either.
Chapter 4
Rhys
I stared at the closed door for five full seconds. Ten. Lost count somewhere after that.
The silence she left behind felt heavier than it should.
My chest ached with something I didn't have a name for—something that had no business existing in the first place. I pressed the heel of my palm against the bridge of my nose, eyes shut, and tried to breathe through the exhaustion that had nothing to do with lack of sleep.
She thought I'd fire her over spilled coffee.
The idea would've been laughable if her voice hadn't carried that tremor of real fear. The kind that came from experience—from knowing what it meant to lose everything over small mistakes. From living in a world where people in power held your survival in their hands and squeezed.
Did I really come across as that intimidating?
The answer hit immediately: Yes.
I knew I did. Built my entire career on it. The silent menace. The cold discipline. The reputation that made rookie players check themselves before they got stupid. It served me well on the ice, in the locker room, anywhere I needed to maintain control without raising my voice.
But hearing that fear directed at me from her?—
That landed differently.
I dropped my hand and leaned back in the chair, gaze still fixed on the door. My hoodie hung over the back of another chair, still damp from where she'd spilled on me. The coffee had been hot enough to sting. Not enough to burn, but close. And she'd looked horrified. Genuinely terrified of the consequences.
Like she expected violence. Or cruelty. Or punishment that fit some pattern I didn't want to imagine.
Fifteen years.
She'd grown up so much in fifteen years. The girl I'd carried out of that house had been small, fragile, all wide eyes and trembling hands. This woman who'd just apologized to me had straightened her spine before walking in here. Had forced steadiness into her voice even when her hands shook. Had looked me in the eye despite the obvious effort it cost her.
Brave. Still so goddamn brave.
But the nerves lurked underneath—visible in every rushed word, every too-fast apology, every flicker of uncertainty that crossed her face when I spoke. She'd learned to hide it better. Learned to function through the fear instead of freezing under it.
The fact that I recognized the pattern gutted me.
She'd survived something. Maybe multiple somethings. The kind of experiences that taught you to calculate every word, track every exit, armor yourself against potential threats before they materialized.
I knew that survival strategy intimately. Lived it myself.
And I hated—hated—that she'd needed to learn it too.
My jaw clenched hard enough to ache. I forced myself to look away from the door, back to the practice diagrams scattered across my desk. The plays I'd been reviewing before she knocked. The game strategies that should've held my attention.
They didn't.
Because part of me was still replaying the moment she'd looked at me—really looked—and seen something that made her drop that cup. Recognition or fear or both tangled together until neither of us could pretend this was just an accident between strangers.
She remembered.
